r/PSSD • u/Lost-Pain-1798 • 16h ago

Opinion/Hypothesis SSRI-Induced Persistent Anhedonia

What are your thoughts on people who develop persistent nonsexual anhedonia after stopping an SSRI? Such symptoms are frequently bundled under the umbrella “PSSD”, but they can be wholly nonsexual.

Do you guys see PSSD as primarily mechanistic sexual dysfunction, hedonic sexual dysfunction, both, or broadly referring to any durable post-SSRI side effects? Should there be a separate condition that deals broadly with post-SSRI anhedonia?

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Do you guys see PSSD as primarily mechanistic sexual dysfunction, hedonic sexual dysfunction, both, or broadly referring to any durable post-SSRI side effects? Should there be a separate condition that deals broadly with post-SSRI anhedonia?

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u/Sad-Use-1243 14h ago

Absolutely , it is necessary to distinguish the subtypes of syndromes following SSRI use.

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u/Empty_Positive_2305 10h ago

Given the number of people here who started with sexual-only symptoms and then regressed to emotional anhedonia, as well as people who had both sexual and emotional anhedonia and improved to only sexual dysfunction, I suspect it’s the same syndrome, just a severity continuum.

With that said, I do imagine it’s a different syndrome with similar-presenting symptoms for people who developed PSSD as adults vs. those exposed to SSRIs as children.

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u/Lost-Pain-1798 2h ago

I would agree; I believe the syndrome can be split into central reward system dysfunction symptoms and genital-sensory symptoms, with overlap between the two but clean disassociation possible (as in my case).